Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes

About the Film

Synopsis

The film explores the vision behind the iconic American jazz record label. Since 1939, Blue Note artists have been encouraged to push creative boundaries in search of uncompromising expressions. Through current recording sessions, rare archive and conversations with iconic Blue Note artists, the film reveals an intimate perspective of a legacy that continues to be vital in today’s political climate.

Legendary artists Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter come together with today’s generation of groundbreaking Blue Note artists such as Robert Glasper and Ambrose Akinmusire to record an All-Stars album. These reflections lead us back to the highly influential figures of the past on which the legacy of Blue Note is built: Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Horace Silver and Miles Davis.

The Film strives to transmit the values that jazz embodies and that Blue Note has been promoting since its inception: freedom of expression, equality, dialogue - values we can learn from and that are as relevant today as they were when the label was founded.

Protagonists

Ambrose Akinmusire

Trumpet / on Blue Note since 2011

"The thing that attracts me to a musician is the fact that they are an artist. It’s the changing, it’s the evolution, it’s the willingness to throw everything out of the window in search of something new."

Michael Cuscuna

Producer, Historian, Owner of Francis Wolff Photo Collection

"Through the years, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff developed a lot of very, very strong friendships among the musicians. I remember Bobby Hutcherson saying, they never seemed like outsiders, they didn’t play an instrument and they had heavy German accents, but they were just one of us."

Robert Glasper

Piano / on Blue Note since 2003

“Most of the great art comes out of messed up situations. You just need something to, you know, to be released from that, you know what I mean, to go somewhere. That’s where jazz is born out of. Hip hop was born out of that. So that’s what we have to still do today.”

Derrick Hodge

Bass / on Blue Note since 2013

"Never at a point do I hear the music and hear them being defeated. Somehow, regardless of whatever they were fighting with, they’re going down in history creating something that influenced my life in a way where I felt freedom. Where it brought me joy, where it made me wanna write music that gave people hope."

Norah Jones

Vocals, Piano/ on Blue Note since 2001

"The reason I love being on this label is because I’ve always felt like I had that freedom – to make my own music and do whatever I want and I don’t feel confined by the restrictions of the jazz genre."

Ali Shaheed Muhammad

A Tribe Called Quest

"Blue Note Records became the go to. What we were discovering is that the jazz records had a lot of open break sections, a lot of solo sections. And not only for the drummer, but for all of the players. They had their moments and I think that was the beauty of discovering jazz."

Kendrick Scott

Drums / on Blue Note since 2005

"Being an African-American, the music itself was a special statement and it is a special statement. To me jazz represents um freedom in two different kind of ways. You can be an individual inside of the music, but still helping with the whole."

Wayne Shorter

Saxophone / on Blue Note since 1964

"When we were in the studio at that time, in the 60s, we questioned whether or not what we were doing would be heard, what effect would it have 20 years from then? Will it do anything in the world, will it create some kind of value? The kind of value you can’t put a price on."

Marcus Strickland

Sax, on Blue Note since 2015

"A lot of this music has to do with how we feel about America and how we came from seeming to progress to going back to an era that we fought to get away from. A lot of that feeling, that kind of frustration, is in the music along with all the hopeful stuff. The music is only a tool to express what’s inside."

Rudy Van Gelder

Sound engineer

"It was my parents’ home, and I was allowed to use the living room to record my jazz music. They allowed me to put a control room window in one of the walls to the living room. And I brought all the equipment in there to record my jazz music."

Don Was

Producer, President Blue Note Records

"If I really am experiencing something difficult uh I’ll put on Speak No Evil and that’s as good as meditation. A neurologist would probably not be able to find the difference between meditation and focusing on Speak No Evil. And I always feel better, always feel refreshed, always remember who I am. That’s – that’s a pretty amazing service to provide for people." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Was

Director

The Swiss filmmaker Sophie Huber gained her filmmaking experience as a member of an award winning Berlin film collective, for which she co-directed several films before directing her debut feature documentary, the critically acclaimed HARRY DEAN STANTON: PARTLY FICTION, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2012. BLUE NOTE RECORD: BEYOND THE NOTES is Sophie’s second documentary.

Blue Note

«Blue Note’s legendary catalog traces the entire history of the music from Hot Jazz, Boogie Woogie, and Swing, through Bebop, Hard Bop, Post Bop, Soul Jazz, Avant-Garde, and Fusion. »

Director's Note

Interview Director

«Swiss filmmaker Sophie Huber succeeds in taking an intimate look behind the scenes of the legendary American jazz label. As the title promises, the film goes beyond the history of the label and follows jazz as a political statement, which is particularly resonant today.»